I'm currently working at the Cygwin-Compiler class on Win32, there I found a problem with "bdist".
When I have build all extensions with my compiler class and then try to use "bdist", the msvc compiler class starts and fails (I don't have it on my machine.)
I think there are two problems.
First the system seems to check the filedates with the objectfile-extensions of the standard compiler ( msvc ".obj" , cygwin ".o" ). So it doesn't find my object files, and tries to recreate them, but uses a wrong compiler. I think it should be possible to configure the compiler also for "bdist". (If this is already possible? Please explain how.) Also I think "bdist" does a "build" if there aren't already the right files. In this case "bdist" should accept *all* parameters which "build" accepts.
You could use: setup.py bdist build_ext --compiler Cygwin In this way you can use all the options build_ext accepts. You have to be carefull with the short options: setup.py bdist build_ext -f is NOT interpreted as build_ext --force but as bdist --format Thomas